TIME OUT NEW YORK, February 21-28, 2002~Sarah Valdez

ZAK SMITH
“20 Eyes in My Head”

This first solo exhibition by Zak Smith, 26, features labor-intensive, acrylic-and-pen-on-paper portraits of the artist and his friends. The images reveal minimal pretense and seem to have been made without a single thought of wowing the art world. Smith tends to portray people in complicated surroundings- in a messy bedroom or at an overflowing desk. Some figures stand in front of artworks, so Smith occasionally depicts multiple images within a single frame. While all the compositions are intricate (even the more abstracted passages are rendered as subtle textures), they’re rescued from visual clutter by a sophisticated handling of paint and a sophisticated sense of color and design. The painstakingly limned environments make his subjects seem animated by complex inner lives.

Smith himself is the subject of Self-Portrait of the Cover of a Magazine, in which the mohawked, tattooed artist is seen sitting sullenly on the ground with an elegant circuitry of gold, silver, olive, and black lines behind him. Another seductive work is O and Stupid Bear on the Couch, in which the androgynous sitter, bathed in fluorescent-hued light, wears all black while slouching on a sofa. Fragments such as a tattooed arm and a TV set figure into other, more freewheeling compositions that seem modeled after photomontages or music-video stills.

Smith’s closest art relative is probably Elizabeth Peyton, another painter of present-day hipsters. She is less attuned to the subcultural vibe than Smith, but he obviously shares her infatuations with fashion and television. That’s clearest in I’m Real Busy and Stuff: a contact-print image of several pieces that weren’t included in the show. Little pictures of skateboarders, strippers, and monkeys draw anticipation for another showing of Smith’s work. One only hopes that the success he deserves won’t ruin him when it comes.